CHAPTER I
DAVIE AND OLD MAN PETERS
“MY sakes! David Pepper, you can’t get it in.”
“Perhaps I can, Mrs. Peters.”
“No, you can’t. There, give it to me. You’re all het up, runnin’ on arrants for Mr. Atkins. He shouldn’t ’a’ told you to hurry clear down here from th’ store.”
David sank down on the wooden box turned upside down outside the Peters kitchen door, and watched Mrs. Peters’s vigorous efforts to crowd a long woolen coat, very much frayed on the edge, one sleeve gone, and various other dilapidations that might be noticed, into a round, splint-bottomed basket. “Your ma c’n do th’ mendin’ better’n me,” she said, during the process, and dropping her voice as her eyes roved anxiously. “I put th’ pieces underneath. O my!” she whirled around suddenly, her back to the basket, and brought up a red face. “How you scar’t me, Tildy!” as the kitchen door was flung wide and a head thrust out.
“’Tain’t Pa—you needn’t be afraid.” Yet Tildy looked over her shoulder and grasped her apron tighter over something huddled up within its folds, as she skipped over the big flat stone. “You know as well as I do that he’s well off toward the south medder.”
“’Tain’t nothin’ to be certain sure of, if your pa is headed for th’ south medder, that he won’t see what we’re doin’ here,” said her mother hopelessly. “Well, what you got in your apron?”
Matilda knelt down by the basket on the grass, and flung her apron wide. “It’s some o’ my quince sass.”
“You ain’t goin’ to give that away!” cried Mrs. Peters in alarm, and resting both hands on her knees. “Gracious, your pa—”
“Let Pa alone, can’t you?” cried Matilda lifting the coat-edge to tuck in the big glass jar. “I guess he won’t rage an’ ramp no more at th’ sass, than your lettin’ Mis Pepper mend this coat.”